"Belief And Seeing Are Both Often Wrong." -Robert McNamara (U.S. Secretary of Defense 1961-1968)

Friday, May 2, 2008

Excalibur & The Unseen Hand: MindWar

"MindWar is defined as "the deliberate aggressive convincing of all participants in a war that we will win that war."

Propaganda the usual way:

"The terror of the Roman name will be such that the world shall know that, once a Roman army has laid siege to a city, nothing will move it - not the rigors of winter nor the weariness of the months and years - that it knows no end but victory and is ready, if a swift and sudden stroke will not serve, to preserve until that victory is achieved." - Titus Livius a.k.a Livy (59 BC–AD 17, The Early History of Rome Vol. 1-5).

MindWar:

"MindWar reverses this sequence. Psychological means for achieving victory-essentially through convincing the enemy that he really wants to bring his national policies into harmony with ours-are fashioned in support of basic political goals. The use of ordinary military force (bombs, bullets, etc.) is regarded as a last rsort in circumstances where MindWar by itself fails.

Essentially you overwhelm your enemy with argument. You seize control of all of the means by which his government and populace process information to make up their minds, and you adjust it so that those minds are made up as you desire.

The MindWar operative must know that he speaks the truth, and he must be personally committed to it. What he says is only a part of MindWar; the rest - and the test of its effectiveness - lies in the conviction he projects to his audience, in the rapport he establishes with it. In practice, however, the difference between MindWar and cynical or deceptive propaganda, from the perspective of the audience, is difficult if not impossible to perceive. The examples of Kennedy's ultimatum to Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis and Hitler's stance at Munich might be cited. A MindWar message does not have to fit conditions of abstract credibility as do PSYOP there; its source makes it credible.

Strategic MindWar must begin the moment war is considered inevitable. It must seek out the attention of the enemy nation through every available medium, and it must strike at the nation's potential soldiers before they put on their uniforms. It is in their homes and their communities that they are most vulnerable to MindWar.

Was the United States defeated in the jungles of Vietnam, or was it defeated in the streets of American cities?

Like the sword Exalibur, we have to reach out and seize this tool; and it can transform the world for us if we have the courage and the integrity to enhance civilization with it. If we do not accept Excalibur, the we relinquish our ability to "inspire" foreign cultures with our morality. If they then desire moralities unsatisfactory to us, we have no choice but to fight them on a more brutish level."

MindWar states a whole truth that, if it does not now exist, will be forced into existence by the will of the United States.

-General Paul E. Vallely (From PSYOP to Mindwar: The Psychology of Victory, Headquarters, 7th Psychological Operations Group, United States Army Reserve, Presidio of San Francisco, CA, 1980). The first President of the National Psychological Operations Association participant in the Pentagon military analyst program and a Fox News analyst. In September 2003, he took part in a Pentagon-funded tour of Iraq ... timed to help overcome the sticker shock from Mr. Bush’s request for $87 billion in emergency war financing." He later told the New York Times, "I saw immediately in 2003 that things were going south." However, after returning he claimed on Fox's "Hannity & Colmes" show: "You can’t believe the progress."

Vallely is also the Military Committee Chairman for the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C., and a member of the Iran Policy Committee. He is co-author, with Thomas McInerney, of "Endgame: The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror." In April 2008 America learned he had been one of a dozen "military analysts" recruited by the Pentagon to spread favorable views of the failing Iraq War via the news. General Valley is also a supporter of the Jerusalem Summit organization and an advocate of the organization's proposal to transfer Palestine to surrounding Arab countries as a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He advocates military-led regime change in Iran, Syria and North Korea." Image: Brainstorming by: Franck44).